Room For Rent
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Caryl AU. Oneshot. He was looking for a place to stay. Anywhere would do. She needed someone to help cover the bills. It wasn't a match made in heaven-or was it? Carol/Daryl


**AN: This little scene came from a tumblr prompt that wanted Carol and Daryl to meet as roommates.**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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The paper said that it was a room to rent. It was a room to rent with access to the rest of the house. It was simple, it was furnished, and it was cheap. The owner needed someone as soon as possible and they were willing to negotiate—what they were willing to negotiate on wasn't mentioned, but Daryl assumed that this was a person that was so desperate for the added income that they might be willing to negotiate on just about anything.

It just so happened that Daryl wasn't concerned with negotiations. What he needed was just about as simple as the advertisement. He needed a place to rest his head at night. A bathroom was pretty much a requirement, but honestly he could negotiate on just about everything else.

He needed a roof over his head and he needed it at a reasonable price—and C. McAlister's price was right on target.

Daryl drove his truck—one of the few things he actually owned and the place that, for at least a moment, he thought he might call home—through the small town that he now thought to call home. It was far enough away, honestly, from everything that he'd ever called home before that he thought it might just allow him what he wanted. It might allow him to start over.

It might let him be Daryl, instead of Daryl Dixon—Merle's younger brother and son of Willard.

When he finally found the address that was indicated in the paper—given to him for free by the waitress at the diner where he'd had a bird's breakfast—he was pleasantly surprised. From the price that he was expected to pay for the room, he'd figured the joint might be a total wreck, but it didn't look that bad.

It was a house of the "starter" variety. There wasn't much to it. It was once painted blue, but much of the paint was fading and chipping away. The walkway out front, which led to the slab meant for parking, was cracked and crumbling in places. But next to some of the dumps that Daryl had stayed in? It already looked like Buckingham Palace.

He pulled his truck into the driveway and checked the address again. Nobody appeared to be home, but he didn't have anywhere that he urgently needed to be. He was going to be looking for a job, but he didn't think he'd find one today. He had enough cash tucked away that he could get through paying the rent and half the bills for a little while if he had to. It would work out.

It had to, this felt like his last chance—even if that was being over dramatic.

Daryl decided to take a look around the place and opened the door to the truck. He got out, lit a cigarette, and walked slowly around the house. The grass was in desperate need of cutting. What had once been some kind of plant life, obviously put around the house on purpose, was now half-dead in places and overgrown on others. Some of the small windows lacked shutters and the whole thing could do with a good scraping and a painting.

But on the whole? It was a fairly solid structure and it was more than great for someone looking to rent a room.

As Daryl circled entirely around the back of the house and started across the front again, he jumped at the sound of the front door opening. It squeaked loudly with hinges in need of oil. As it turned out, someone was home—and C. McAlister was apparently married.

"What do you want?" The woman asked.

She was a redhead with a head full of half-curls that made it look like she'd let a two or three year old have at her hair with a pair of shears. Plain enough. There wasn't much about her that was worth mentioning. C. McAlister must have liked her well enough, though.

"Come lookin' for your husband," Daryl said.

The woman stared at him, still halfway inside the door and halfway on the concrete stoop that served as a porch of the house.

"Then you're in the wrong place," she said.

Daryl looked for his paper, patted his pockets, but realized he'd left it in the truck.

"This ain't the place?" He asked. "I'm lookin' to rent a room. Paper said it was this address."

The woman continued to stare at him, but at the mention of the room her body language changed slightly.

"This is the address for the room," the woman said. "But you won't find my husband here. God willing, at least."

Daryl felt a strange sensation at the comment and at the way that she said it, but he dismissed it. It wasn't his business. Nothing about this woman had to be his business besides whether or not the bills got paid.

"You're renting the room?" Daryl asked.

"It's my house," the woman said. "I'm Carol McAlister. I advertised for a roommate, but...I had something a little different in mind."

Daryl knew what he looked like.

When he'd lit out of the trailer park that he'd been living in with his brother, determined not to be there when his brother got back on some kind of bender and possibly pursued by the police, he'd just gotten in from work. His job, there, had been nothing fancy. He'd been working on an "as needed" basis shoveling dirt and trash and everything else for a construction company that had been putting in mill hill houses—much like this little starter piece—to clean up lots. Now he'd been simmering in that filth for two days, and sleeping in his truck, in the Georgia heat.

Daryl was a sight, and he knew it. He'd been a little surprised that the diner had let him dine there, even if they'd managed to find him a booth tucked in a corner and far at the back.

"You got a place," Daryl said. "And you need a roommate. I need a place to stay—and I ain't a bad roommate. I know what I look like—but it's 'cause I ain't had access to a shower in a couple days. I'm—kinda clean. I don't keep no palace, but I don't like livin' in no sty neither. I'ma get a job and I'm good for the rent—electric or whatever too. Yours is the only rent around here that I can afford."

Carol shifted uncomfortably.

"I was hoping for a—a female—roommate," Carol admitted.

Daryl swallowed. He wanted this room because there wasn't another that he could afford, not if he didn't want to put every single penny that he made into paying some of the more extravagant prices of places that boasted extras that he'd never need or desire in his life.

"I can't change that," he said. "But—hell—I'm not gonna raise hell. I don't hardly drink except on the weekends. I ain't loud."

Carol opened her mouth like she'd speak, balanced on one foot, and rocked a little as she held to the door. She was thinking about it. It was clear from her toes to her face that she was thinking about it. Daryl needed her to think about it.

"Listen," he said. "I understand if you don't wanna rent to me. But—I gotta have somewhere to stay. I'm just looking for somewhere quiet. I'm looking to get away—to get away from what I had. Give me a month. It'll give me time to find someplace else and it'll give you time to find somebody else and we'll be splitting the bills. In a month? I'll go on and you don't gotta think about me again."

Carol made a noise that might have been a groan or a growl, depending on someone's perspective, and then she sighed.

"You don't even want to see the room first?" She asked. "Before you decide your determined to live here?"

Daryl chuckled to himself.

"That's how desperate I am," he said. "I don't care what the room looks like."

"Do you want to see the room?" Carol asked.

Daryl nodded, biting back his smile. Carol waved him up on the concrete stoop and came, snubbing his cigarette out on the cement as he reached the door.

"You're gonna have to get a can for those," she said. "You're not smoking in my house and I don't want those all over my yard."

"Whatever you say," Daryl commented, following her into the house.

From the inside, Daryl's suspicions that it was a simple starter house were confirmed. Small living area, kitchen with a dining nook, and it looked to be two bedrooms. Hers was down at the end of a little hall and he suspected that hers might come with a half bath attached. On that same little hall, just off the kitchen, was the main bath as well—the one they'd be sharing.

Daryl's bedroom was across the little house, on the other side of the living room. There wasn't much there, but it came with a chest of drawers, a twin bed, and a closet that was four times as large as he'd ever need for the few articles of clothes that he actually owned.

"Looks perfect to me," he commented, walking around the tight space of the room.

"It was supposed to be something like a kid's room," Carol said. "Or a guest room or something. I don't know. I know it's small. That's why I was trying to be fair on the rent."

"How many people turned you down so far?" Daryl asked.

He could see it on her face. He wasn't the first to see the room, but he'd be the first to accept it.

She didn't respond to him, though. She simply shook her head at him and continued speaking.

"It's kind of close to town," Carol said, acting as though she needed to sell the place to him. "We'll split electricity and water—they come in the same bill. I don't have any kind of cable or anything like that, but the television picks up three channels if you're careful with the antenna. I don't mind you getting something like that if you want it, but you'll have to pay three fourths of it right now. I'm barely making month to month as it is."

Daryl shook his head.

"I got no need for all that," he said. "How long you lived here?"

"Three months," Carol said.

"Not too long," Daryl said. "You come into this place or you buy it? Needs a lot of work."

"The price was right," Carol said. "Like you? I was looking to be somewhere that I wasn't before."

Daryl stared at her a moment. What she'd said earlier flitted back through his memory. God willing, he wouldn't find her husband here. That could mean that she wasn't married—and wanted no part of ever being married—or it could mean that she was married and hoped the old man wouldn't find her here. She hadn't clarified which, and Daryl hadn't asked, but the thought renewed itself.

Still, he wasn't going to ask now, either. He needed a place to stay and he wasn't going to let running his mouth keep him from having it.

"It's a nice place," he said. "I could help out some. Mow the grass maybe? Paint or something?"

"You're only here a month," Carol said, shaking her head. "I'm not expecting you to be a maintenance man too."

"If I did it," Daryl said, "I'd do it as a favor. Nothing else. So—does that mean I get the room?"

"For a month," Carol said.

Daryl hummed.

A month could be a short amount of time or it could be an eternity, all depending on how one looked at it. Either way, though, it would be long enough. It would give him time to find a job, put some savings into his pocket, and look for something else. And, if things worked out? It might even give him enough time to decide that he liked it here and to convince the freckle-faced redhead in front of him that she liked having him here.

For now, though? It was perfect.

"Get my things?" Daryl asked. "Take a shower."

Carol sighed.

"Whatever you want," she said. "You live here now. I'll—get you a key. I had one made. I've just got to find it now."

Daryl hummed.

"No rush," he said.

He thought about his next words for a moment, afraid that they might be taken the wrong way and hoping they wouldn't be, and then he opened his mouth to speak.

"Hey—after I'm clean? Saw a little burger place? Dinner on me?" Daryl asked.

Carol furrowed her brows at him.

"I'm not interested in..." Carol started.

Daryl held a hand up to stop her and couldn't help but smirk at her.

"I wasn't asking you on a date," he corrected quickly. "So don't take me wrong. I meant—supper on me. Let me buy you a burger...now that we're living together or whatever."

"Roommates," Carol corrected.

Daryl bit his lip and nodded.

"Roommates," he said.

Carol hesitated a moment and then she nodded. A smile came across her face. Daryl liked the way that it looked on her. She looked nicer when she smiled.

"I'd like that," Carol said. "But—just as roommates."

"You got it," Daryl said.

He stepped around her, escaped the tight space of the bedroom that they'd stopped to speak in, and let himself out of the house—his house for at least the next month. He smiled to himself on the way to his truck to get the few belongings he had.

For most, this place wouldn't be much, but for Daryl?

It was everything he needed and, just maybe, a little bit more.


End file.
